From: Kathy Isaacs <kisaacs_at_mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:07:40 -0500

As a reviewer, I find the most difficult part is fitting all the things you might say about a book into roughly 175 words. There simply isn't room to cover all that readers might want to know and certainly not room for examples. A really good review is like a poem or a picture book in which every word or phrase has meaning - sometimes multiple meanings. That takes time to craft and is not easy even if you have the time.

Marc's suggestion is excellent - and already being done by bloggers whose reviews are often more lengthy, including examples and illustrations, and even interviews with the authors and illustrators. While reading blogs daily is more than I can manage, I'm always delighted to find a blog review when I'm trying to find out more about a particular title.

Kathy Isaacs

Marc Aronson wrote: I often wish we had two kinds of reviews (again especially for NF, but not only): first a notice -- essentially what we have now -- an evaluation of how this book fits with kids, needs, and children's literature. Then a more considered essay where a reviewer and an expert could dig in, examine, really look at a work that an author has spent years crafting to really look under the hood, see how it works, what it does. Of course only a few books would get that space. But even those examplers would open up how we look at books -- what is there to be found.
Received on Tue 10 Nov 2009 02:07:40 PM CST